Con: Money!
The £30m plus fee is an extraordinary amount of money and would heap a huge amount of pressure on the player to deliver. Would we be complaining if the rumours were of a £15m transfer? There would probably be a lot less people talking about it that’s for sure. We’ve only paid a fee in excess of £30m once before and that was for Andy Carroll. Most Liverpool fans won’t need reminding how that one worked out for us. Can we do better for this fee?
Con: He’s not proven at the top level
He’s played for Genk, Standard Liege and Aston Villa. He’s only ever won one trophy in his career – the Belgian first division in 2009 – and he only played nine times that season, scoring just three goals. Surely, for the sort of money that is being suggested, we need to be signing a quality player who has experience at the top level. We need to be building that winning mentality, not signing players who have won next to nothing in their careers.
Con: Injury concerns
Benteke has missed ten Premier League games this season. During the last campaign, he missed 12. Has he been unlucky? Absolutely, the majority of that absence can be put down to a single injury, the rupturing of an achilles tendon in April of last year, but we’ve been here before haven’t we – Daniel Sturridge has already given us so many headaches with his constant issues and we’d be loathe to have another striker sitting on the sidelines.
